The Second Word, Part 2

Taking the first bite of the elephant to explore concupiscence

05/09/2024

There is an old Indian proverb which asks: “How do you eat an elephant?” The answer is, “One bite at a time.” I think that means go slowly and steadily and you will eventually eat it all. Reading Pope St. John Paul II’s chapter two of the theology of the body can feel like eating an elephant. It is not only one hundred and fifty-three pages long, it is incredibly dense, and at points, blindingly insightful. It is hard to eat it all in one sitting. The pope divides chapter two into seven sections, as well as adds an appendix, the elephant’s tail. I propose we consider these seven sections in four groupings, which will correspond to the next four homilies including today. We will tackle the first group today (sections one and two), and examine how the pope presents Jesus’ teaching about adultery in the heart and describes how the heart has been broken because of concupiscence. Next time we will study the substantial section three, where the Holy Father notes the shift in the center of gravity of morality from mere actions to the deeper movements of the heart. This section is ideal for those who complain: “I can’t think of anything I do wrong!” We can sin with movements of the heart as well as movements of the body.

That will be followed by a third homily reviewing sections four and five dealing with trusting the heart and how eros (the erotic) and ethos (the ethical) interplay within the heart. And finally, we will look at sections six and seven where the pope analyzes St. Paul’s contribution to growing in purity of heart with the power of the Holy Spirit, or more simply, “life according to the Spirit.” Can you see how John Paul’s main concern in chapter two is with the heart: its brokenness, its trustworthiness, its healing, and ultimately, its elevation to new heights of holiness? In other words, the pope’s chapter two, like my second bucket of marriage preparation, focusses on the heart work, which is really hard work. But John Paul will insist in the face of all doubters or naysayers: “One should add that this task can be carried out and that it is truly worthy of man." Don’t lose hope in the goodness of the human heart and in the power of the Holy Spirit to make it better, or as I like to say, bionic.

We take the first bite of the elephant of chapter two by glancing at sections one and two. Like the pope did back in chapter one and as he will do in chapter three, here also he bases all his reflections on a “word” of Christ. The real Teacher of the theology of the body, let us not forget, is not the pope-saint but Jesus himself. John Paul begins chapter two stating: "As the subject of our future reflections – during the Wednesday meetings – I want to develop the following word of Christ, which is part of the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you: Whoever looks at a woman to desire her [in a reductive way] has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:27-28). "

John Paul does not want us to miss that Jesus is principally preoccupied with the heart work, the hard work, of preparing humanity to marry him. He does not want to marry a bride with a broken heart, but with a bionic heart. Like an expert cardiologist, the pope first runs tests on humanity’s heart in order to properly diagnose its illness, its brokenness. John Paul finds a spiritual eco-cardiogram, we might say, in 1 Jn 2:16-17. The pope notes: "We are referring here to the concise statement of 1 John: ‘All that is in the world, the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world passes away with its concupiscence; but the one who does the will of God will remain in eternity’ (1 Jn 2:16-17).” Think of concupiscence like a cancer that consumes the heart. Once he has diagnosed the cardiac malady as concupiscence, the spiritual doctor investigates its roots in Genesis 3, the story of Original Sin, where the cancer originated.

Recall how in examining Christ’s First Word about Gn 1-2, the pope recognized three original experiences of Original Solitude, Original Unity, and Original Nakedness, so now John Paul explains how Original Sin will undo those authentic experiences and make them feel foreign. Back in the 17th century, when the British poet John Donne was having marriage trouble with his wife, Anne, he wrote this memorable epigram: “John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done.” The pope acknowledges this undoing of Original Sin: “The words of Genesis 3:10, ‘I was afraid, because I am naked, and I hid myself,’ confirm the collapse of the original acceptance of the body as a sign of the person in the visible world.” That is, with Original Sin man went from feeling how singular and superior he was in the world (the meaning of Original Solitude) to how simple and subservient he was to the world. Instead of amity and closeness there arose animosity and distance between man and the world in the wake of Original Sin. Henceforth mankind would suffer from this symptom of the cancer of concupiscence.

The pope then turns to explore how concupiscence undoes Original Unity and causes “a second discovery of sex.” Whereas Adam and Eve, through their naked bodies easily communicated love, care, and mutual support, they now feel fear, suspicion, and even opposition toward each other, and so cover their nakedness. John Paul writes perceptively: “This necessity [to cover themselves] shows the fundamental lack of trust, which already in itself points to the collapse of the original relationship ‘of communion’.” Put simply: communion has been replaced with conflict. This difference in male and female motives and mindsets is aptly captured by the adage: “Men use love to get sex, and women use sex to get love.” In any case, Original Unity has been undone and replaced by an obstinate opposition, or at least a lurking suspicion of each other. But don’t believe me, just ask any couple who is married for more than five days.

Thirdly, John Paul turns to the earlier notion of Original Nakedness and shows how concupiscence deforms it, almost obliterating it entirely. Nakedness in this context should not be understood simply as a naked body, someone in the “birthday suit,” as we euphemistically says. Rather, nakedness is a form of transparency that allows man to see through the body and perceive the soul. When parents try to teach their children the awkward dynamics of human sexual relations, what analogy do they typically reach for? They call it “The birds and the bees.” Why? Well, because parents erroneously equate what a husband and wife do in the act of sexual intercourse with what animals do when they copulate. The reasons parents capitulate to that comparison is because the body no longer transparently reveals the soul. Rather, it has become opaque and hides the soul. The body does not reveal, it conceals. The loss of this nakedness (this transparency) of the body causes people to believe humans and animals are essentially the same kind of creature. All dogs go to heaven, right? Perhaps more tragically, the loss of Original Nakedness makes man forget he is created in “the image and likeness of God” (Gn 1:26), and believe he is more like an animal than an angel.

The pope describes this in his characteristically precise but circuitous way: "The human “heart” experiences the degree of this limitation or deformation above all in the sphere of the reciprocal relations between man and woman. Precisely in the experience of the “heart,” femininity and masculinity in their mutual relations seem to be no longer the expression of the spirit that tends toward personal communion and are left only as an object of attraction, in some sense as it happens “in the world” of living beings (birds and bees, for example) which like man have received the blessing of fruitfulness (see Gen 1)." Can you see now why the heart work of marriage preparation is truly hard work? Indeed, such heart work would not only be hard but impossible without the grace and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Human hearts suffer from the cancer of concupiscence, by deforming and debilitating Original Solitude, Original Unity, and Original Nakedness. Changing metaphors, the pope puts it in stark terms: “The ‘heart’ has become a battlefield between love and concupiscence.” And by the way, that was just the first bite of the elephant, sections one and two.

Praised be Jesus Christ!